Raven's Hell (Savage World, 2)

by Jenika Snow

  Shining the light along the wall, she spotted what she had been hoping was in here. A condom and pain reliever wall dispenser hung behind the door, and although both were beat to shit and cracked wide open, she was able to get some of the packages off the floor.

  A few single-serve packets of ibuprofen and acetaminophen and even some condoms were by her feet. Although sex wasn’t a part of her life anymore for obvious reasons, she did take the condoms. They were useful in other ways, such as containers for water, which sounded nasty but worked when she was desperate. She shoved the medicine and rubbers in the backpack and stepped back out into the store.

  Rebecca moved behind the pharmacy counter, and although she had been hoping she could find antibiotics, even if they were probably expired and wouldn’t help if she had a cold or flu, she saw everything was pretty much cleared out. There was hardly any light in this part of the store, so she swept her flashlight back and forth until she spotted some first aid supplies.

  Crouching on her haunches and balancing the flashlight between her neck and chin, she shoved into her bag the gauze, alcohol swabs, A&D ointment, and other small supplies that had been kicked under a shelf. She took the flashlight again, shone the light over the ground, and spotted a few small bottles of saline in the corner under a box.

  They were filthy, and a few were already busted open, but the sterile ones she picked up and kept. She stood and glanced around the room once more. This place was picked clean already, and she wouldn’t be able to get anything else of use from it.

  Stepping out of the pharmacy, she immediately saw a clothing store a few shops down and made her way over to it. Repeating the same procedure she did for all buildings before she entered, she waited for a few minutes to see if anything partially dead came out. Inside the clothing store proved a little more positive as she saw several racks of overturned clothing and even some vending machines in the corner.

  The backpack she had only carried so much, but she was able to find a tote bag and started filling it with some undergarments, socks, and even a couple of pants and shirts that were a little too big for her but were better than nothing.

  A winter coat was pushed underneath a shelf, and although there was a tear in the arm, and the coat itself was filthy from the dust and grime on the ground, she took it and slipped it on. The clothing she wore was on its last leg anyway, and anything other than what she had on was like gold.

  The vending machines proved pretty much useless as the glass was busted out and everything taken from inside it. But she moved toward the back, saw that a few bags of chips and even one chocolate bar were behind it, and sent a silent thanks to whoever was helping her find this stuff right now.

  After she got what she needed, she headed out of the clothing store and went into a few other ones, collecting what she could carry, and finally stopping at the lone grocery store in this town. It was much bigger than the other buildings she had gone into, and compared to the chain businesses in Denver, it looked more like a convenience store at a gas station.

  Grass and weeds were starting to make their way through the numerous cracks in the pavement right in front of the doors. There were a few busted and partially dismantled cars in the distance, but she didn’t see any movement. The sun was especially bright today, but it was still cold as hell. She lifted her arm and blocked the light as she stared at one of the cars.

  The glare off the windshield proved to block out anything that was inside. But if an infected were lying low in a hibernated state in there, it would have seen her and come staggering out.

  The frigid wind picked up, and the scent of winter in the air slammed into Rebecca. She pulled the coat around her tighter, adjusted her bag and tote on her shoulders, and headed forward. The front window was broken in one spot, and the dirty and foggy-looking glass spoke of age and death.

  Rebecca gritted her teeth at the cold weather that was coming on way too fast and moved inside after she once again made sure it was safe. After she was done here, she’d head back to the warehouse and hunker down for a very cold night.

  Collin sat back and stared at the woman moving to each store in town. He was currently sitting in one of the beaten-down cars that was close to the grocery store she just entered.

  He could see her moving around in there, and although he was tempted to go to her, Collin didn’t want to scare her. He had seen how shifty she had been just scanning the area, and although that was smart, if he made himself known, she’d probably kill him on principle alone because of his gender.

  Collin stared through the broken window of the store and saw her picking up some cans and then shoving them in her bag. Staying put was pretty fucking hard. Never in his life had he had to wait for anything he wanted, but for this woman, one who was surprisingly alone and alive, he made sure to take his time.

  She had long dark hair, and it looked like it might reach down to her ass, but she had it in a ratty-looking ponytail. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes, or her shape due to the layers upon layers of clothes she had on, but he noticed the wicked-looking blade she held.

  It was like something out of the show Oz, except this one was at least ten inches in length and looked like it would fuck an asshole up.

  Like an asshole with only one thing on his mind, he grew hard at the images that played through his head. They were ones that didn’t have the bulky clothes covering her body from him or the dirt and grime that covered them both.

  They were pictures in his head of them hot and sweaty, alone in this world, but fucking so hard and fast that it was like their last day on earth.

  “Damn,” he gritted out, adjusted his dick, and knew he wasn’t going to let her go, not when the obsessive side of him had risen up at the first sight of her.

  She would be his.

  6

  Rebecca walked fully inside and stared at the shelves. Most of the things were scattered along the floor. The lighting hung by a cord from the center of the ceiling, and the florescent bulbs were in shattered remains on the ground.

  Some of the shelves were turned over, and empty boxes of food littered the ground, but there were some bent cans with missing labels amidst the rubble. Moving over to the cans, she picked them up, tried to tell what might be inside due to the labels gone, and said fuck it.

  If it was edible, it didn’t matter what it was.

  She moved over to a rack that had once held those little snack-sized bags of chips and grabbed a few that were on the ground. They were nothing but crushed up crumbs now, but she was fine with that too.

  A bottle of water was what she spotted next, along with some hard candy, cough drops, and even a few partially open meat sticks.

  She shoved all she could find in her pack, because these days there wasn’t anything edible that she didn’t like. She didn’t have a choice, not if she wanted to survive. She snagged up one melted and partially opened chocolate bar and even a travel-sized bottle of cheap vodka and placed them in her bag. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  She saw a comb and mirror across the floor by a cardboard cutout of one of the popular teen heartthrobs before all this happened. But the cutout was now leaning to the side, faded from the light that had gotten to it, covered in dirt and grime from the weather, and the smile on his face looked sad now.

  Picking up the mirror and comb, she stared at her reflection, at the dirt that covered her face, the bags under her green eyes, and the way she changed so much.

  How many young girls had come to this very spot before the contamination, taken a look at the pop star staring back at them with his perfect smile, and looked at themselves in the little colorful mirrors like Rebecca was doing right now?

  Sighing heavily from exhaustion and wear, she took a few of the combs and mirrors and put them in the tote. And then as she turned over everything in the store, searched high and low, she found one small toothbrush sitting on a rusted-out shelf. A single roll of toilet paper was also a few feet away, rolled under a pile of smashed boxes, a
nd the top layer covered in God knew what.

  She was going back to her loft with more things than she thought she’d find, and it all sounded like nirvana at the moment. She could open one of these cans, heat up the contents with the few matches she had found, and enjoy a warm meal. She hadn’t known how good she had it until the little things in life were now a rarity.

  A sound behind her had Rebecca spinning around and staring at a young woman. Well, she wasn’t a woman any longer, but a corpse with long, stringy blonde hair, lifeless, pale, almost white eyes, and dark coagulated blood seeping from every visible opening in her body.

  She wore a pair of pants, ones that were tatters on her thin, skeletal body, and a tank top that showed the flesh hanging from her bones.

  She’d been dead for a while, given the state of her decomposition. She was slowly shuffling toward Rebecca with her arms outstretched and her mouth open wide, and it was obvious she was starving. She was weak, and although she’d have enough strength to still go after fresh meat, this corpse was more of an easy target.

  Ones that had eaten more recently were still slow as hell, but they also had a little bit of strength in them if they caught a person.

  She held her knife tightly in her hand, set her bags down so they didn’t have her faltering in bringing this thing down, and waited for it to come closer. The infected tried to walk through one of the clear shelving units at first, and when that didn’t work and it finally fell to the side, she tripped forward. Righting herself and reaching out to Rebecca again, she made this nasty sound and finally lunged at her.

  Rebecca fell backward, tripping over one of the end caps and landing on her ass. The woman corpse was on Rebecca seconds later. Rebecca struggled to get her arm free, as the coat sleeve was hooked on a piece of metal shelving.

  Black goo slipped from the zombie’s mouth and landed on Rebecca’s coat, and then she finally heard the rip of her jacket tearing free of its prison of metal. She brought the knife up and plunged it right in the woman’s eye.

  The body immediately slumped forward, and she scrambled back, trying to get away from the stench of death that the corpse emitted. Rebecca’s stomach churned painfully, and she turned away and threw up.

  She might be able to kill these bastards, and she was usually hardened, but that didn’t mean there weren’t times, especially when she went head-to-head with these things, that it didn’t affect her.

  7

  One of the infected moved slowly past the vehicle he sat in, but Collin didn’t move, and the zombie didn’t notice him. He stared at the grocery store again, his bag beside him and filled with a bunch of shit he grabbed from the various little shops in this town, and then he noticed a corpse move into the store… right where his woman was. Yes, she was his; she just didn’t know it yet.

  He stiffened as he watched the contaminated creature go farther into the building, but he couldn’t see the woman any longer. She was too far into the store for him to see her clearly through the broken glass.

  Grabbing his bag and knife from the passenger seat, he climbed out of the car and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He silently, stealthily moved across the street, through the parking lot, and stopped when he reached the front of the building. He moved closer to the front doors, making sure the corpse was alone, and when he stepped inside, it was to see the woman had already taken out the infected.

  The body was a gruesome mess of black blood and flesh on the ground, and his woman was in the corner, staring at it all.

  Collin had to admit he was stunned and appreciative that this woman had taken out one of the infected. The sick, demented, and twisted part of him even got aroused over the fact that she could handle herself. He sheathed his knife and moved closer. The glass under his boots crunched, and she looked at him, her hand shaking as she held the knife high in the air.

  “I am not afraid to kill you, so back the fuck off.” Her voice shook, and she now held the knife’s handle with both hands. “I mean it. Don’t come any closer. Just turn around and leave.”

  Collin lifted his hands, showing her that he wouldn’t harm her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly. “If I wanted to harm you, I could have done it ten times over by now.” He hoped she could see that if he really wanted to attack her, he could have done it before she even realized he was there. “I’m not a savage toward women.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t respond, and still held the knife toward him. But she wasn’t screaming for him to leave, wasn’t getting crazy with that fucking shank, so at least that was a more positive note.

  “Listen, I saw you in trouble, or thought you were at least, so I came to help,” he said in a neutral tone. The truth was Collin didn’t speak in a soft, coaxing manner, and he sure as hell didn’t try to woo a woman into liking him.

  He was a bastard on all accounts, bad to his soul, and took whatever he wanted. He had done that with Sparrow all those months back, had planned on having her for himself, because he needed a woman in his life. This life was hard enough without having to be alone and not have a female to warm his bed and pleasure him.

  He could be gentle with her when the time came for it, offer her comfort and protection, and in return, she’d be his. No one else would touch her, look at her, or even fucking think about taking her from him.

  She would be tied to him until the day he died, and this little female would come to realize that, even if he had to throw her over his shoulder and go all caveman on her ass.

  He held his hands out in surrender so she knew he didn’t mean her any harm. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

  She opened her mouth, but before any words came out, her eyes widened and Collin heard the crunching of glass behind him. He ducked just as he felt the whoosh of air move over his head. He instantly took note that there were two men standing in the entryway of the store and another one right beside him with a long knife.

  He grabbed the blade from where it was tucked at the small of his back, and working on instinct alone, he sliced out, cutting right through the asshole’s faded, holey jeans and right into his leg. The man howled out, fell to a knee, and then the other two came forward. Collin wasn’t about to have this shit, wasn’t about to lose this woman when he had just found her.

  He would kill every last bastard to ensure that.

  He stabbed the asshole who was on the ground, brought the knife right across his neck, and opened his jugular. Blood sprayed out in a great arch of red, and the gurgling sound of him choking on his own blood brought Collin back to the underground in New York.

  He stood, charged toward the man who was standing closest to him, and tried to slice the asshole too. But then he heard a scream from his woman. When he grabbed the man around the neck and spun him around, he saw the woman in the corner, her knife held high and her hands shaking. The fucker who was advancing on her had this sick, sadistic smile on his face.

  “Kill him if he touches you!” Collin shouted, and the woman looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. She was afraid, but he could sense it was not because of this particular situation. She was afraid, because she had been in a situation like this before—men coming after her and looking to hurt her in unspeakable ways.

  Rage burned brightly inside him, and he saw red. He was a very bad man, but what he had never done, what he would never do, was hurt a woman. These pricks wanted Collin dead to do just that, to take something from her that wasn’t willingly given.

  Even if Collin hadn’t claimed this woman—even if she didn’t know it yet—he wasn’t about to let anyone hurt her. He sliced the throat of the other man, and then it was just him and the motherfucker who was facing his woman. He turned and faced Collin, saw his two friends dead and bleeding out on the ground, and bared his rotting and yellowed teeth at him.

  Collin would show her that he could protect her, that being with him was safer than being alone.

  “You piece of shit. You’re going to die, but not before you watch me fuck her raw
and bloody.” The man charged forward, trying to get the upper hand on Collin, but no fucking way was that happening.

  This asshole didn’t know who Collin was, who he had been. He was ruthless back when shit was afloat, before the infection, and when the world had been at his feet. But now he was even more savage, even more hardened and cold to everyone and everything.

  Collin braced himself as this little prick tried to take him down. He got him on the ground, and Collin pinned his arms to his sides with his legs on either side of this piece of shit. He could have killed this bastard nice and slow and watched him bleed out, just lying here and waiting for an infected to come along and contaminate him.

  But he lifted his head and stared at the woman. Her eyes were wide, and her lips were parted as she looked at the dead bodies on the ground, at the blood, and then at the way he was holding the knife over the man who had nearly taken her from Collin.

  “Look away if the sight of this upsets you.” He didn’t say it angrily, because he could see she was living in the past, remembering the moment that had frozen her. There was no need to make her witness the grisly act he was about to take pleasure in.

  “You motherfucker and your skank-ass cunt—”

  Collin punched him in the face and heard his nose crunch from the impact. He bared his teeth at this degenerate. “Shut the fuck up,” Collin growled out.

  “Kill him,” she said softly. “Make him scream,” she added with anger and hatred in her voice.

  Collin glanced at her for a second and then nodded once. He brought the blade across the man’s neck, just like he had done to the other two, but more slowly this time, the fucker bellowing in agony. He watched as blood covered his chest. The guy gurgled and spat out the red liquid.

  When he was dead, Collin wiped his blade on the man’s jacket and stood. He didn’t speak while he went through the three motherfuckers’ bags and pockets, taking what he could use as food, weapons, and supplies. He then turned and faced the woman.